I lay in bed, watching the moonlight tracking across the ceiling. I fingered the Band-aid on my neck covering the place where Jack’s knife had pressed in. Thankfully it had been a small cut, despite how scary it had felt at the time. My parents hadn’t even noticed the skin-colored Band-aid on my neck, under my hair. Cayden’s bruises had been a lot more noticeable, but they were more than used to hockey players’ injuries. He made up a random sparring session with the other Ice Gods, and my dad bought it. As long as Cayden wasn’t bleeding out, he probably wanted to avoid getting involved in his players’ personal lives.
I couldn’t sleep. The horror of the day was too fresh in my mind. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw horrible demons. Jack and the smell of the trailer. The word resting in scar tissue on Cayden’s back, a monument to abuse that could never be erased. I tossed and turned. Sleep was miles away, and my mind couldn’t stop going to Cayden. I wondered if he was asleep. I didn’t think he would be.
The things I’d found out were disturbing as hell for me, but it had to be even worse for him. I knew I’d hate to be alone with those kinds of memories dragged out into the light, not to mention whatever had gone down between Cayden and his former foster father after I’d left. A man was dead, if he could even qualify being called a man. When I finally fell asleep, a pallor of death clung to my dreams, scaring me into restless wakefulness.
I found myself at Cayden’s door before I could overthink it. It was like my feet had carried me there without my knowledge. I opened the door and stepped inside. He was sitting up in bed, his broad back leaning against the headboard, as far from sleep as I was. The blinds were open, and from the spare room window, you could see the moon hanging over the sea in the distance.
He turned to me, his face unsurprised. It was like he’d been waiting for me. There was that feeling again between us, an inevitability that there was no point in fighting.
I crossed toward him wordlessly, and he sat up straighter to meet me, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. I stopped before him, suddenly afraid to touch him. He reached for my waist, nearly circling the entire thing with his broad hands and long fingers. His chest was bare, and the white of the bandage on his side stood out in the darkness.
He tugged me closer so I had to kneel on the bed, straddling his lap. I moved carefully, not wanting to jostle his injury, but he pulled me to him like he couldn’t feel pain.
It seemed the spell that I was under extended to him, too. Of course it did. Since the second we’d met, there was a strange kind of magic that only seemed to exist between us.
I lowered my weight onto him, his hardness immediately pressing against my inner thigh. As I felt his long, stiff cock, I suddenly knew exactly what I was looking for. I wanted him inside me. He was the only guy I’d ever wanted inside me, and right now, my body knew what it needed to say to him more than my mind did.
He flexed his hips against me as I gently rocked on him. He tilted his head back to watch me. I spread my fingers over his high cheekbones and down the planes of his chiseled jaw, stroking over his stubble. His dark eyes never moved from mine as I rubbed myself on him. Even just rotating my hips and dragging my panty-clad pussy across his cock felt like coming home. I gasped softly as he nudged upward against me, sending wetness blossoming inside my cunt.
My head fell back as his lips found my neck and he dragged his teeth down my skin, kissing and licking as he went.
His hand gripped my ass cheek, sliding between my legs and hooking my panties to the side. The stretchy cotton went easily. The wet tip of his cock slipped just inside me. He was naked, I hadn’t realized. He paused there, waiting to see if I pushed him away. Instead, I angled my hips just right so that his first thrust took him deep inside.
He growled against my neck as I rocked myself on his cock, perfectly impaled on him.
His hands squeezed my ass, lifting me carefully up and down his length, setting a pace that made my pulse pound. He felt so good inside me like this. Best of all, the empty place within where the nightmares had been hiding was filled now. He overwhelmed my senses with his scent and the hot touch of his hands. I had no space to be scared in his arms.
We moved slowly together, without hurry, until I came. It was a slow, unfurling spread of pleasure, and comfort, as familiar and reassuring as the sight of the shore after getting lost at sea.
He didn’t follow me, not yet. Instead, he stood, picking me up, and then lowered me onto the bed and crawled over me, all while still sunk deep. He fucked me slowly as I relaxed back against his pillow, the sleepiness that had eluded me before suddenly unable to be ignored.
“Sleep, Freckles. I’m right here. You’re not alone,” he murmured in my ear, his cock sliding languidly in and out of me.
It felt so good, and I was so tired, overwhelmed and weary from anxiety, I let my eyes close and drifted.
I didn’t feel him come, so I had no idea how long he fucked me through the night, only that when I woke up, I was wet as hell inside and still stuffed with him. His cock had softened a little, but the tip was still inside me. He’d turned us so he was spooning me from behind. When I moved carefully off of him, a rush of cum slid free, so much it seemed to break some kind of record. He’d been fucking me and filling me all night long. Maybe he’d needed the comfort just as much as I had.
I crept from the room and headed for the shower, after tucking the comforter in around him, and smoothing the worried lines from his forehead.
I sat next to my dad in the front seat of his truck the next morning, and Cayden sat in the back. I could feel his eyes on the back of my head.
“I don’t know if Cade’s told you, but scouts will be at the game from HHU.” My dad’s smile was present in his voice.
I twisted to him, shocked.
He grinned from ear to ear. “To channel Captain Obvious for a second, this is a big deal for the team, and me. We’d better be on our game.”
“But you guys aren’t even champions yet.”
My dad shook his head. “When you dominate every game, scouts take notice. They don’t want to wait around until there’s more interest and have to lure you to them. They want to lock down future stars today. They will especially be looking out for Cade, Asher, and Marcus.”
“Not Beckett?”
“Beckett’s father donates so much money to his alma mater, he can walk onto the team with a broken leg and they’ll all welcome him with huge smiles.”
“Wow, nepotism for the win,” I muttered, and I peered at Cayden in the mirror.
His face was hard to read.
“Well?” Dad asked Cayden. “Aren’t you excited?”
Cade turned his blue gaze to him and slowly nodded. “Can’t you tell?”
His deadpan voice sent my eyes rolling.
My dad just chuckled. “I guess that’s what focus looks like.”
We drove on and soon pulled into the huge gates of HHH. Now that everything was out in the open about California, I felt lighter than I ever had, despite the terrible events in Midnight Falls.
“Thanks for the ride, I’ll see you later,” I said to my dad as he stopped in the staff lot.
I hopped down from the truck.
“Don’t thank me. I’m cherishing every single ride we have like this, now that our days might be numbered,” my dad called to me.
I stilled in the doorway. “Might be numbered?” I repeated.
He grinned. “I’ve not given up hope that you’ll still decide to stay. After all, HHU is a great school…at least as good as your other pick.”
I huffed, suddenly aware that Cayden might be within earshot.
“Dad,” I started.
He chuckled, waving me away. “I know, don’t nag. I’ve got it. But a man can hope, can’t he? See you later, Lilypad.”
I got two steps before a huge hand landed on my shoulder and my backpack was plucked off me.
“Hey!” I whirled around, already swinging for it. My hands hit the wall of Cayden’s chest.
“Calm down, Freckles, I’m just carrying it for you. You’ve got so much in here, you look like you’re about to tip over.”
“I can carry my own bag just fine, and besides, if you care to remember, you have a stab wound in your side.”
“A flesh wound, you said so yourself,” Cayden said and actually grinned at me.
I stopped, my momentum halted by the unusual sight.
He walked backward away from me, still holding my pink bag on his shoulder.
“Cayden, give it back,” I protested.
He shook his head. “No, I don’t think I will. I think if you want your stuff today, you’ll have to come and ask me for it.”
“Are you being serious right now?” Heat filled me, a writhing sort of excitement from interacting with Cayden again. Despite everything we’d been through together, he gave me one cheeky grin, and I was melting. Feminists should use me as a cautionary tale. I needed to donate my brain to science for research on illogical decision-making.
“Seems like it. I guess I’ll be seeing you between each period today.”
“Cayden!” I snapped. “Can you stop?”
Cayden sighed, his shoulders falling. He tipped his head to the side and narrowed those sea-blue eyes at me. “No, I don’t think I can. When it comes to wanting you, I can’t seem to stop.”
He rummaged around in my bag while my heart was lodged too firmly in my mouth to talk. He took out a thick textbook and my favorite notebook and handed them to me.
“You have Physics first, don’t you? Here. I’ll see you after.”
I blinked at him. Just how well did he know my schedule? I didn’t get to ask him, though, as he was already turning and walking away, taking my bag with him.
